Dissected
by Gypsy Love
Summary: The incident where Johnny kills the soc, in slow and loving detail.


Slow motion-a moment dissected.

Things happen fast, sometimes too fast, but you can slow them down later, taste all the flavors, see every grain in the wood, every fingerprint.

When the socs shoved Johnny down at the park, while they were drowning Ponyboy, this is what happened. Johnny and Ponyboy split up when it was clear the socs were going to kill them. They both knew they couldn't take them, not that many, and not drunk. If they split up maybe they could get away. Ponyboy ran one way, Johnny the other. The socs split up, too, and some of them grabbed Ponyboy and dragged him to the edge of the fountain. Some of them chased Johnny and shoved him to the ground. Johnny landed hard, the wind knocked out of him, then one of them kicked him in the stomach. Johnny curled up in pain, unable to breath. The other socs dunked Ponyboy under the water of the fountain, and the water was freezing. He struggled up and out of the water but they didn't let him go. The socs by Johnny watched him as he was curled up and moaning.

"Stay down, pal," one of them said, and they left to help their friends with Ponyboy. He was the one talking to Cherry, he was the one she wanted to talk to before she'd get in the car with them. Johnny didn't seem as involved, so they left him alone for now. They'd get back to him.

Johnny could hear the struggle with Ponyboy over by the fountain, he heard the splashes of the water and Ponyboy calling for him as he struggled to get his breath back, to get up and do something. But for now he could barely move.

Ponyboy kicked against them and twisted and nearly got away a few times but they were stronger, these socs, and they were drunk and crazy. Ponyboy thought about Johnny getting beaten up in the vacant lot and he knew that these socs were the ones who had done it.

Johnny knew that, too. He didn't really recognize them but he recognized the rings the soc was wearing and he recognized the whiskey flask he was drinking from, and he recognized the blue mustang they were driving. He remembered the way those rings felt getting slammed against his face and his ribs and his back. He remembered how it felt being held down, pinned to the ground and no matter what he did he couldn't get away from them as they kicked him so hard, punched him so hard, and how that beating was worse than any his old man had dished out, even worse than when he was whipped with a two-by-four. He knew, too, as he lay there trying to breath, that it was gonna happen again, and maybe worse. They had a knife, he saw it flashing in one of the socs' hand. Ponyboy wasn't struggling so much anymore and he wasn't calling Johnny's name anymore, and finally Johnny felt like he could breath again and he got to his feet, felt in his back pocket for his switchblade and with a practiced hand he flicked it out and gripped it in his fist just like Dally would.

He went over to them and they didn't see him. Ponyboy was soaking wet and struggling weakly, and the socs were still laughing, still calling out insults and threats, and Johnny stared at the knife one of them held and he stared at the rings on the other one's hand. It all rose up in Johnny then, the years of being beaten by his old man, the years of being scared, the beating by the socs, it was all there in his mind and he couldn't take it, all the years he had wanted to kill himself, all the years of his parents fighting, ignoring him, hitting him, his mother screaming at him. All the times he had slept outside in the cold, all the times he'd been thrown to the ground and against walls, all the black eyes he'd had, the black and blues, the aches, the broken bones. He saw the soc with all the rings holding Ponyboy down in the water in the fountain, laughing, laughing just like he had when he was beating Johnny.

Johnny took his knife and plunged it into that soc, and the blood started to spread immediately, and the other socs looked on in horror, watching the blood, watching his fall to the ground, to the hard cement in front of the fountain, and then they ran. Johnny helped Ponyboy out of the fountain and laid him on the ground and then he sat down, too, his back against the water fountain, the knife in his hands. The knife was covered with blood, his hand was covered with blood, there was blood everywhere. It spread in a circle from the soc, who lay dying, his breath bubbling as he choked on his own blood, drowned in it. Johnny just sat there, unable to believe what he had done, unable to take it back. It would define everything from now on.


End file.
